Saturday, November 29, 2008

I really needed a stick of 800mhz DDR2. There’s a Best Buy somewhat close to here so I went over. When I get there, I see they have one stick of Kingston Value RAM, however it’s 145 DOLLARS. Thinking this was clearly a typo, I headed to the ‘Geek Squad’ guy at the register who scanned it and told me:

‘Nope, that’s how much this kind of RAM costs, it’s really a special kind‘. (yeah ‘value’)

I replied that it certainly was not. That is should be under 50 bucks ‘at any store’, he then laughed and told me that they match prices, but not ‘online only stores‘, to which I replied: ‘name a store, any store and that’s the price I will use‘. He said Fry’s (a popular brick and mortar store in Palo Alto) and we pulled up the website. The same RAM was 33 DOLLARS! Not on sale; nothing.

He called the manager, who came and said they couldn’t price match with a difference that large. I leveled with them… ‘Guys, look, it’s one stick of ‘value’ RAM. My PC is broken. I rode my bike here. Fry’s is in Palo Alto. I would pay double what it is at Frys, I am not tryin to rip you off, but I will not, on principle, bend over and take it like this; five times normal retail price is ridiculous!‘

The manager, seeing people behind me, started to talk down to me ‘We aren’t ripping you off, you are trying to price match to another store’s black friday ad! we only price match to real, non-sale prices!‘

I said ‘Look, it’s not a sale item, your own guy brought it up, name any store, where will you price match to?‘ He thought for a min ‘Central Computers, on Howard..‘ (they are not a chain and it would probably be more expensive..) ‘Ok, pull that up!’ We pulled the site up and the ram was 34 DOLLARS!

He turned to me quietly: ‘50 is as low as we can go.‘ ‘Sold!‘

I used to think Best Buy was decent, when you needed a component, if they had it, why go anywhere else? They are such a large chain that they can really discount items because they purchase in bulk. Like I said, this is what I used to think… While I have been in Germany the past 4 years apparently things have changed.

Have any of you seen anything this bad? Charging $145 for something all other retailers have for < $35 is just wrong. It irks me that they pay these ‘geeks’ in their ‘squad’ to tell people lies from behind this knowledgeable facade.